My take on it .. I have to get drug tested to work so my taxes can fund the welfare program so why should the people receiving have to be drug tested as well.
I'm pretty sure you meant to say "why shouldn't".
1. I really wish people would stop using that as an argument for it. Your employer chooses to drug test you, not the government. Even if you worked for the government and were required to pass drug testing, it still wouldn't matter. Drug testing is to ensure that you are in the best possible condition to perform your duties, applying it to a social program doesn't make any sense.
Why don't you cap most of those so that it'll affect people that make 250K+?
Say like on the mortgage interest thing, why not have it so that properties that sell for over say 2 million do not get that write off.
Remove the exemption on capital gains
stuff like that.
That sort of already exists. Only the interest on the first $1 million is deductible.
Though it really shouldn't exist at all. That kind of stuff mostly gets built into home prices so there's no real savings for the consumer. If a person saves $3K a year on taxes from the deduction they're just going to be able to spend that much more a year on the mortgage. The government effectively subsidizes the real estate industry to the tune of $100 billion a year.
It sounds like it's actually on the table though. There have been some proposals that would drastically limit it or eliminate it all together in order to deal with the fiscal cliff. We'll see if it actually happens.
That sort of already exists. Only the interest on the first $1 million is deductible.
Though it really shouldn't exist at all. That kind of stuff mostly gets built into home prices so there's no real savings for the consumer. If a person saves $3K a year on taxes from the deduction they're just going to be able to spend that much more a year on the mortgage. The government effectively subsidizes the real estate industry to the tune of $100 billion a year.
It sounds like it's actually on the table though. There have been some proposals that would drastically limit it or eliminate it all together in order to deal with the fiscal cliff. We'll see if it actually happens.
The problem with the mortgage deduction is that if you eliminated it you would likely crash the realestate market again as vaues would drop as borrowing costs increased so you would have to unwind the deduction slowly over a long period say 10 to 20 years
I'm not a scientist, man. I can tell you what recorded history says, I can tell you what the Bible says, but I think that's a dispute amongst theologians and I think it has nothing to do with the gross domestic product or economic growth of the United States. I think the age of the universe has zero to do with how our economy is going to grow. I'm not a scientist. I don't think I'm qualified to answer a question like that. At the end of the day, I think there are multiple theories out there on how the universe was created and I think this is a country where people should have the opportunity to teach them all. I think parents should be able to teach their kids what their faith says, what science says. Whether the Earth was created in 7 days, or 7 actual eras, I'm not sure we'll ever be able to answer that. It's one of the great mysteries.
Obama "has to get serious," Boehner told reporters following his discussion with Treasury Secretary Timothy Geithner. "It's very clear what kind of spending cuts need to occur, but we have no idea what the White House is willing to do."
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"An adherent of homeopathy has no brain. They have skull water with the memory of a brain."
A few republicans came out with somewhat of a moderate stance and said they agree on not raising taxes on people earning below 250k so let's not throw the baby out with the bathwater. Other republicans have said let the Dems have their way so that when it fails it is all their fault.
problem is that early on it seems the Tea PArty and lunatic fringe of the party have shored things up in the party to continue to dictate the direction they take. This despite losing the presidential election and losing seats in Congress which most would take as confirmation that the american public agrees with the Dems on this issue....especially because it was a MAJOR theme in the election.
Boom! The Southern Strategy (referenced in post 1 of this thread) is back in full force:
transcript:
Quote:
CHARLES KRAUTHAMMER: It's not just a bad deal, this is really an insulting deal. What Geithner offered, what you showed on the screen, Robert E. Lee was offered easier terms at Appomattox, and he lost the Civil War. The Democrats won by 3% of the vote and they did not hold the House, Republicans won the house. So this is not exactly unconditional surrender, but that is what the administration is asking of the Republicans.
This idea -- there are not only no cuts in this, there's an increase in spending with a new stimulus. I mean, this is almost unheard of. What do they expect? They obviously expect the Republicans will cave on everything. I think the Republicans ought to simply walk away. The president is the president. He's the leader. They are demanding that the Republicans explain all the cuts that they want to make.
We had that movie a year-and-a-half ago where Paul Ryan presented a budget, a serious real budget with real cuts. Obama was supposed to gave speech where he would respond with a counter offer. And what did he do? He gave a speech where he had Ryan sitting in the front row. He called the Ryan proposal un-American, insulted him, offered nothing, and ran on Mediscare in the next 18 months.
And they expect the Republicans are going to do this again? The Republicans are going to walk on this. And I think they have leverage. Yes, for Congressional Democrats it will help them in the future if Republicans absorb the blame because we will have a recession. But Obama is not running again unlike the Congressional Democrats. He's going to have a recession, 9% unemployment, 2 million more unemployed, and a second term that's going to be a ruin. That is not a good proposition if you are Barack Obama.
Well, so much for them being less crazy this time around. Thought they'd maybe work a bit since their entire reason for being of making him a one term president is no longer valid.
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Originally Posted by MisterJoji
Johnny eats garbage and isn’t 100% committed.
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The two solitudes of the American electoral urban and rural. Judging by urbanization rates, the long term trends, again, look bad for the Republicans.
edit: redrawing the electoral map to show population:
Good article. Some very cool pictograms (or whatever they're called).
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"For thousands of years humans were oppressed - as some of us still are - by the notion that the universe is a marionette whose strings are pulled by a god or gods, unseen and inscrutable." - Carl Sagan Freedom consonant with responsibility.
Santorum outlined his opposition to the treaty most recently in an opinion piece published in the Daily Beast on Wednesday. He wrote that the treaty "gives too much power to the U.N., and the unelected, unaccountable committee tasked with overseeing its implementation, while taking power and responsibility away from our elected representatives and, more important, from parents and caregivers of disabled persons."
He wrote further that “our nation has been the worldwide leader when it comes to protecting the disabled. We should be telling the U.N., not the other way around, how to ensure dignity and respect for the disabled."
Quote:
"He either simply hasn’t read the treaty or doesn't understand it or he was just not factual in what he said," Kerry said, "because the United Nations has absolutely zero, zero, I mean zero ability to order or to tell or to even - I mean they can suggest - but they have no legal capacity to tell the United States to do anything under this treaty. Nothing.”
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"An adherent of homeopathy has no brain. They have skull water with the memory of a brain."
This treaty is based on US law passed by Bush the Elder.
The UN wants countries around the world to follow the formalization of dignity and courtesy that the US championed.
That the GOP would vote for a war that creates thousands of disabled persons, have the treaty endorsed by respected members of the GOP like McCain (POW) and Bob Dole - who came to the vote in a wheelchair - and attack Obama for surrendering the US' role as the leader of the free world - and then vote against this treaty on essentially NO grounds....shameful. How anyone can even apologize for this party is beyond me.
GOP Senate minority leader Mitch McConnell proposed a bill that would allow the president to raise the debt ceiling on his own with congress oversight. Apparently his hope was that Democrats would be so opposed to allowing the president to have such authority that they would vote down the bill themselves. Instead the Democrats called his bluff and took him up on the offer. He ended up having to filibuster his own bill to prevent it from passing.
You are a thousand percent right, but Republicans filibustering their own bills is actually pretty common - as of Obama's election.
I remember reading somewhere less than 10% of bills don't get filibustered nowadays and this is down from the 30% just a couple of decades ago. Absolute waste of time and money for US taxpayers. McConnell especially makes it his goal to try and filibuster everything just to make the Dems look bad.
One ray of hope, Senators like Udall and Warren are pushing for filibuster reform - a rule change* that would require Senators to stand-and-talk for a filibuster rather than just invoking it by merely saying boo.
Rule changes
-can only happen on the first day of a Senate
-only require a simple majority
